Apparently the Rice Bowl is so far back on the back burner that it isn’t even simmering.
Karl Benson, commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference, came to town Thursday to address the Little Rock people whom he and Mid-American Conference Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher met with a few months ago when they said the two leagues had agreed to play each other in a bowl game, presumably to be called the Rice Bowl, at War Memorial Stadium.
Steinbrecher was nowhere to be found Thursday. Benson, who did the right thing and faced the folks, said he would search for another conference, presumably one more in the footprint of the Sun Belt, but the MAC folks were out.
He couldn’t comment on the story that is circulating that the Sun Belt and MAC will still meet in a bowl game, but it will be in Montgomery, Ala.
That will be announced Monday in Montgomery, no doubt in a flowery news conference.
ESPN will take ownership of the game, which will be played in 25,000-seat Cramton Bowl, saving the conferences the trouble of putting up$250,000 each and negotiating their own TV contract, as was discussed for the Rice Bowl.
It will prove, once again, that ESPN is not concerned about attendance numbers.
Montgomery is a nice city and most likely will do a great job of hosting a bowl. It joins Mobile and Birmingham as Alabama cities with a bowl, all owned or under contract to ESPN.
Benson did say he would try to find another conference to match up against the Sun Belt for a bowl game in Little Rock.
Don’t count on it happening.
As everyone knows, the NCAA will take control of college postseason play next year when it starts its four team playoffs, so it will be lifting a lot of the rules for having a bowl game.
There could be be as many as 44 bowls next season, not counting the playoffs, and adding nine new bowls to the glut of 35 means 88 teams would have to play at least .500 ball to fill all the bowls, under the current standards.
Just think: There are almost three times as many Division I college basketball teams as there are Division I teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision, yet basketball gets only 68 in the NCAA Tournament.
Of course, football is the cash cow, and ESPN is the most powerful sports entity in the world, and that is why Montgomery is getting our bowl game.
Yet, it might be better to be on the back burner while some of the new bowls appear and disappear, which is likely to happen. The role of the bowls will be greatly diminished when the playoffs begin after next season.
Thursday’s column about one media outlet (IMG) getting exclusive interviews and photos with the Arkansas Razorbacks was not about closed practices.
Trey Schaap and I fielded some calls about that on Overtime (KABZ-FM, 103.7), but my column was never intended to be about that.
I understand why Bret Bielema has practices closed. Hopefully it won’t be forever, but right now he and his staff are installing a new system and a new way of doing things.
He needs the undivided attention of all his players as they learn how to perform in a balanced offense and new defense.
It was nice that last Friday, one day before Arkansas’ first scrimmage, he decided to let the fans and media watch. Hopefully he will again, and maybe give a little more time for people to make plans.
If he wants to tweet that news as a way of letting the world know, well, that’s his choice, too. But I’ll bet more people learned they could watch last Saturday’s scrimmage from radio, television and newspapers.
Sports, Pages 19 on 08/16/2013